Comments

Comment by darkarsenic

Awesome rogue skill that can be used both offensively or defensively. You can vanish and run or regen energy or you can vanish and hit another opener (such as Cheap shot for some combo points and a quick stun). A skilled rogue should vanish and hit the opener in between DoT ticks (or you can put vanish on your main bar and a skill such as Cheap Shot under it on the stealth bar). Make sure if your going to run away is to not vanish on top of the thing your attacking or it'll see through your stealth.

Comment by bangy

There are so many uses to this, and every rogue should learn how to use this well.Useful in WSG when being Flag Carrier and under pressure - note that you drop the flag once vanished however, and you have to pick it up again fast. Confuses the enemy, giving you just a few more seconds of life, the difference between winning and losing!

Comment by tydie

Comment by Burner

Just thought I'd mention that in addition to breaking movement imparing effects, vanish also:- Removes Hunter's Mark.- Is the only way to stop a pet from attacking you (even if stealthed) that's been ordered by its master to attack, unless you get out of range of course.- Can be used to avoid both physical or magical damage if timed properly.- Resets aggro for PvE encounters.Vanish has also had a long history of being considered buggy/broken, which is somewhat debatable. In the past, there have been bugs where rogues would vanish and a person autoattacking would hit them right back out of stealth or a spell would still hit when it should have been resisted. However, it appears that these bugs have been fixed in previous patches.

Comment by Mikezila

Vanish temporarily makes your Stealth strength astronomical, so even if you're up against a 60 that wants your blood, Vanish+Sprint can let you get away unseen in most cases.

Just make sure to get far enough away so that when you lose the Vanish buff they don't see you.

Comment by mikejr

This is a Rogues "Get Out of Jail Free" card, and can be used in a manner similar to the Hunter's Feign Death.

Best saved as an emergency out, it' also useful for thinning the crowd.

For instance, a quest Boss with two adds:Sap one of the adds, engage the others. You should be able to kill one and as soon as the sap wears off, vanish, bandage, and repeat thereby taking three enemies solo.

Comment by Mikezila

This also boosts your Stealth for a short period of time, letting you sneak past guards and players that would otherwise see you.

Comment by ll4m4

This is a very helpful skill but you may want to watch out, it won't remove Damage over Time's DOTS, Poisons, etc. So if anything breaks you out of stealth normally, then it will break you out of vanish. Although Vanish does destroy Hunters Mark.

BY THE WAY, THIS SKILL IS BROKEN. LOOK AT MY SCREENSHOT.

Comment by ll4m4

This is a very helpful skill but you may want to watch out, it won't remove Damage over Time's DOTS, Poisons, etc. So if anything breaks you out of stealth normally, then it will break you out of vanish. Although Vanish does destroy Hunters Mark.

BY THE WAY, THIS SKILL IS BROKEN. LOOK AT MY SCREENSHOT.

OCCASIONALLY YOU WILL GET HIT OUT OF STEALTH OR SHOT, OR HIT BY A SPELL.

Comment by donation

Stealth Detectionas of patch 2.1

5 points of stealth detection raises your stealth detection by 1 level. So a level 70 player with 10 points of stealth detection can see stealthed targets as if he were a level 72 player.

Stealth works the same way. 5 points of stealth raises your effective stealth by 1 level. Rogues and druids can both spend talent points to get 15 points of increased stealth, raising their effective stealth by 3 levels.

The most stealth detection you can achieve is to be a human rogue, grouped with a warlock who has a felhunter out, wearing Catseye Ultra Goggles, drinking an Elixir of the Searching Eye, and using your racial Perception. This will get you a total of 119 points of stealth detection. However, the effect of vanish is as follows: . . . . . . . Rogue Ability - Vanish (enters an improved stealth mode for 10 sec) . . . . . . . Rank 1: +170 stealth http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=11327 . . . . . . . Rank 2: +270 stealth http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=11329 . . . . . . . Rank 3: +370 stealth http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=26888As you can see, it is not possible to have enough stealth detection to see an equal level rogue who has performed a vanish.

***** A special note regarding Invisibility and Invisibility Detection *****

Stealth is NOT invisibility and invisibility is NOT stealth.Stealth detection will NOT help you see invisible targets.Invisibility detection will NOT help you see stealthed targets.

Comment by HighFive

Stealth detection only improves your ability to see rogues that are within the 270° in front of you. It has no effect of the 90° "blind zone" behind you. You will only see stealthed characters behind you if they come within 2 yards, but they can use their melee abilities from as far as 5 yards.

Experiments show that when - = 0 you will detect enemies as close as ~6.5 yards range,

when - = 10 - ~10 yards

and when - = 20 - ~13 yards.

This range is not affected by the stealthed target moving or staying still.

Comment by Elk20

Man this move is so broken. hat really pisses me off about it is that it removes hunter's mark. It probably removes flare too.

Comment by Shaan

After 3 years of "this is working as intended", "vanish is fine, l2p" from devs...

Comment by groegan102

Preperation is a great companion-ability to Vanish, especially in PvP. Consider this scenario:

You are about to lose to a mage...1. Pop Vanish 2. Oops! Mage AoEs you 3. Pop Preperation 4. Pop Vanish 5. Run like hell 6. Laugh as the mage runs around confused.

Has happened to me more then once, saved my skin and my me feel like a cheating bastard too =D

Comment by Zeneroth

So this is what those people were doing. All this time I thought they were using some kind of hack. lol

Comment by Lt5kA

afaik vanish is still broken, and doesn't work as its supposed to work. i saw rogues on bg's being taken out of vanish on the very first second of vanish - millions of times. and my rogue friend says - pets still remove him from vanish.

Comment by lordbovine

I found this out the hard way. Don't press vanish while you are on a flying mount just to entertain yourself.

You will dismount and die.

Comment by Dragonemperor

Here is a question... what happens when you use vanish if you do not learn stealth??

Note.. the ability doesn't say "Requires Stealth"

Comment by Longshot

Lvl to 22 WITHOUT using stealth? Go try and answer that question by yourself.(poison q will be impossible)

Comment by Schaefer

SH|T DONT WORK

Comment by Ziechrez

Yup, the move is still busted.-Dueled a mage and my vanish negated polymorph, but I didn't go into stealth-Still getting auto attacked out of it and I have even auto attacked other rogues out of their vanish spells.

Comment by Kataya

Had a weird encounter the other day (on level 36 rogue), attacked an alliance flight guard with my thrown and the enraged gryphons charged towards me and before they hit me I vanished and both their attacks hit me for 1440 each so that is 2900 or so damage and I only have 1500 health so I should have died but the damage didn't go through, is this a normal occurance?

Comment by daurenr

Comment by Kanmuri

"Improved stealth mode" gives you +170 stealth rating, equivalent to 34 extra character levels. A vanished level 22 rogue, barring any other stealth modifiers, is effectively as stealthy as a level 56 rogue. Therefore, it's very good for escaping an angry town guard outside melee range or a player in a battleground. It probably won't get you away from a level 70 unless you use it before they spot you.

Comment by veno3

Comment by Rarehunter

Comment by sky3union

i know it by experience but want to clarify...vanish is still broken, right?

Comment by sky3union

found a way to solo him as a lvl 24 rogue...

1. pull the elemental add...don't know why but after couple of seconds pythas and the other druid of the fang add will aggro also...

2. kill the elemental add and vanish

3. wait 5 min...sap pythas and kill the left over add then vanish...

4. kill pythas (use 5pt expose armor not eviscerate)

IF vanish works as intended there will be no corpse run.....

don't know it's because i used expose armor this time, but pythas seems to be much easier compare to skum or the 2nd druid boss...

ps. you might not have to wait 5 min for vanish cooldown...as i stated above pythas seems to be much easier with 5pt expose armor...i guess with one healing potion you will be able to kill the leftover druid of the fang add and finish off pythas...

Comment by Nocturnal

You are right! There is no need of reagent

Comment by Remord

IMO an useful macro : )

/cast Vanish; Stealth

use stealth while you arent in combat , but if u are in combat and you need to escape use vanish......

BUT , dont spam it , because u can need it later :)

Comment by ZerglingHero

4 years to be precise =D

Comment by ZerglingHero

Those pets have very keen sense of smell.

Even after this patch i was sniffed out while vanished.

Comment by guenivere

Are you supposed to "dispell" faeric fire with vanish? I've never owned a rogue, so I don't anything about them.

Comment by Norfax

Even though everyone probably knows this by now, it's worthy to note that when vanish does "bug", it usually bugs the attack that broke vanish aswell. As an example: Rogue A kidney shots rogue B. At the same time rogue B vanishes, bugging vanish, but also bugging rogue A's kidney shot. This can sometimes be benificial, and if the attack "vanished" is a projectile type (anything that flies through the air, frostbolt, death coil... anything of that sort), the 'projectile' will be avoided without breaking vanish, often resulting in much cheer and applause from any spectating crowd.This is sometimes refered to as a Neilyo, as this particular rogue likes to put 10-20 scenes of him vanishing attacks as an intro to every single on of his movies.

Comment by 1771

The effect (improved stealth) fades from you if you take fall damage.

Comment by sky3union

To Yata:uhh...you obvioualy don't know what part of 'Vanish-being-bugged-or-broken' i'm or scub is talking about

Vanish being broken is a VERY old-time bug since when i last played WoW (which is right before BC came out and even then Vanish being bugged was a problem for some time)

And what IS a Vanish bug? open your eyes and read clearlyVanish breaks from auto-attack

and i'm not talking about just pvp, vanish bug was first reported in pve combat and what i said on my above post (which is now purged) that 'I know it by experience' , i meant pve combat while i was soloing named-mobs in WC

you can even search the comments on those named-mob in wowhead to compare the time-frame when i wrote about the purged-above-comment

and from my experience, if you don't use Vanish carefully when the mob is attacking you, your Vanish will immediately break from mob auto-attacking (so it is essential to either gouge the mob or run away some distance and use Vanish)

--------------------and the part Vanish being bugged, i agree with scub's comment about Vanish always will be broken because i understand the programming behind it...

you see, in the early year of the game when rogues used Vanish they seem to gain brief second of immunity during rogues-raising-both-hands-animation (you may call it spell casting animation or global CD or whatever)and believe me when i say it, lots and lots of rogues abused that slight programming errorwhen mage Frost Nova-ed a rogue and gain some distance, naturally they will either cast Fireball or Icebolt. and right before either spell hit the rogue, rogues could use Vanish, nullifying the spell and gain stealth (you could see this in most of every old rogue pvp videos VS mages)

thus Blizz decided to remove the brief immunity of Vanish which started to cause Vanish-not-working-as-intended while Blizz said it otherwise

my main is not a rogue, it's just a toon i play with and haven't touched him for months

funny you mentioned hunters in your post, but just imagine...

hunter sends pet to X rogue...X rogue gains distance...hides behind a building...cast Vanish...and out of nowhere hunter's pet comes at you and breaks you out of stealth....

imagine how would that feel? this was another part of Vanish-being-broken although i believe in some previous patch it was updated 'pets will now drop target when rogues use Vanish' in the very corner without Blizz even mentioning 'Sorry, we were wrong. Vanish was indeed broken'

hey, i'm not complainting about Blizz (as my main is not a rogue and i'm not a rogue-in-heart) and i know Vanish breaking from auto-attack will not change most likely

BUT, 'Yata' before you start renting non-sense about what you don't know...just keep it cooo.......OMG i'm totally renting now :X

anyway i should try to keep it cool now, and you have a nice day :P

edit: LOL you would wanna read comments in Vanish rank2 or 3, someone also mentioned Vanish bug. and it was patch 2.2 where hunter's pet chasing Vanished-rogue was fixed

Comment by s3curity

I dont know about anyone else but, Every once in a while this ability chokes up and doesn't work.( and no i don't have poison on me or any other dot)

And whatever was chasing me continues to do so.

Comment by roguebfl

Dose Vanish trigger Global Cooldown?

Comment by ZettaSlow

The other day, a Rogue vanished in front of my very eyes but before she went completely invisible I cast Seduction on her, my Succy chased her for a good 40 seconds, cast seduction and then I Chaos bolted the damn gnome in the face.

Was a glorious day indeed. Anyway, still bugged. :D

Comment by m30w

Sad to say but even now it is STILL FREAKING BUGGED pets still chase vanished rogues and even casting pets can still target a vanished rouge form a distance of over 20 yards

Comment by Cryptern

100% failure rate against capital city guards.

Comment by Yann

Thing to know about Vanish, quoted from the Rogue Q&A:Vanish isn’t working properly and breaks when you breathe on the rogue funny..

Comment by Yann

Thing to know about Vanish, quoted from the Rogue Q&A:Vanish isn’t working properly and breaks when you breathe on the rogue funny..

Comment by Kobzol

working as intended...

Comment by LetsEatIn

I find this move useful when DPsing a boss with a good tank quite frankly because you can Ambush/Garrotate then when you regain a bit of energy, vanish, and ambush quite quickly. Beats backstabbing by alot :| Sadly, the cooldown at level 24 is a bit high :P

Comment by lltomohikoll

At final boss in Oculus,Can you vanish , then re-mount drake to restore drakes health ?

Comment by lovechia

We have a change for Vanish in place for 3.3. You will get to try it out soon (tm). As promised, if it proves a significant buff to rogues, we may have to compensate elsewhere. Just because it hasn't worked as intended doesn't mean it will be balanced when it does.

Comment by Eluneril

''For the first second after this ability is used, neither Vanish nor Stealth can be broken by taking damage or being the victim of a hostile spell or ability.''

About time!

Edit: Why rate this down? It's true, and the only place on the page where you can see this info (The post above is obviously downrated and was made after this comment)

Comment by samarium

But will they still recieve the effect of the spell?

For instance, it's a common mage tactic to save Cone of Cold and a corresponding GCD when you're expecting a rogue to vanish.

The wording of the patch seems to indicate that yes, the rogue will still take damage and be snared (and frostbitten), but you can't honestly say you've never seen Blizzard take something broken, fix it, and then keep right on going and break it the other way.

Comment by Stormwaker

Vanish's sole intent was to make the rogue enter stealth while in combat to either escape and/or re-open on the target(s). Vanish eating a spell is an interesting but unintended side effect. With the change, it will work as it is supposed to (maybe, I won't believe it till I see it actually working on normal and not test realms), while I'll miss seeing a chaos bolt or old school PoM/Pyro getting Om Nom'd by Vanish, I'm more glad to actually getting away.

Comment by Koreon

Best OP skill..... EVER!

Comment by ninkosen

This must not work that way, if that gives you level 74 how do you explain there is not a rank 4 for level 80's ? if that rule was true, vanish would lower or at least not increase their stealth level...which is stupid at most, since most rogues know vanish is broken, they essentially use it as a preventive tool to get basicly invisible when they do not have MoD.

Now there is also the theory that it add 74 level to your current level which mean you would be a level 154 (or 770 stealth value). Here again I think it's wrong. Because let's take rank 1 for example :If it add 170 (or 34 levels) to your character, than normally as a level 29 you become a level 63 right ? First sounds a bit overpowered even if it lasts 15 seconds... Secondly I can tell you I've tried against levels 45 ish, they see you dozens yards away... I even tried against a hunter level 36, vanish and I close up on him from the side, his pet attacked me while I was Vanished, because he saw me and I was at more than 5-10 yards from the pet, and 10-15 from the hunter, he probably had tracking but whatever...for me I take it I was level 34 and no more, but again this doesn't make sense because the rank 2 is at level 42, so what from 34 to 42 vanish is useless ?

So I really have no clue how this spell work... But this is none of thoses 2 ways. And this is very sickening when you don't know how the spell is supposed to react, I like to know my exact stealth level, and know exactly how a guy see me...

Comment by IamCAPSGOD

Comment by Jetlok

This is good if your group gets wiped in a dungeon. And if you have any reviving items(like Goblin Jumper Cables), you can revive the healer and they can rez your group. I haven't tried this but I assume it works :)

Comment by Spellbreak

90% failure chance against hunters

Comment by sehimes

Yes, vanish does not work in any pvp situation against pets or slow cast toons. E.g. a warrior with a slow 4 sec slam on a rogue need only start the slam, have the rogue vanish, and the slam will hit the rogue and remove the stealth.

Blizz's BS about not being able to test it, is simply they don't care about melee toons - if this were a lock or mage - they would be all over themselves fixing it.

But melee - FYFP.

Comment by tahlbrar

if you dont mind wasting a cd try this out. if your in a duel against another rogue and your both stealthed just going around look for your enemy and you see him and he sees you pop this and he cant pop a sap or start an opener and kill you

Comment by DoctorLore

Still bugged. I've been farming BRD on my 80 rogue, and very often on large pulls Vanishing starts the mobs running back, but some will continue to chase me and pull me straight back out.

Comment by MelzIV

Surprised no one's commented on this line yet...

"For the first 3 sec seconds after vanishing, damage and harmful effects received will not break stealth. "

R.I.P failed vanishes

Comment by Jrubzjeknf

Tested it today and oh my god, vanish actually got fixed. Its reliable! No need to use shield trinkets any more! \o/

Comment by FlayOnDarkIron

As of 4.0.1 this is bugged. Blizz states it is Working As Intended™ but it is most definitely not. It is supposed to provide an additional 135 stealth value to your base stealth value of 40, but as of 10/28/2010 you are visible plain as day upon activation of Vanish until the 3 second buff of "Improved Stealth" fades.

In my pretty unprofessional testing i would say it currently has about a 50/50 chance of dropping aggro in instances, and quite frequently if you aggro something while soloing an instance (like BRD) and hit vanish to leave combat, you in fact won't leave combat and the mobs will continue to attack you after the imp stealth buff goes away. After vanishing in pvp, you can expect to get deathgripped / ice lanced / flamestriked / hunters marked / death coiled even if you are at max range, while stealthed.. I personally have also been attacked out of stealth by snakes from a hunters snake trap after i had vanished and entered stealth.

Its hard to decribe all the problems with it, all i can say is if you are experiencing issues with vanish and stealth in general, you're not alone.

Comment by Aaro

From a Blue Post:

The purpose of Vanish in Cataclysm is to get back into stealth. If you want to avoid harmful effects, use Cloak of Shadows.

We grew tired, as did many players, of "Vanish never works LOL" so we looped back to the original intent of Vanish being about stealth. That is why the tooltip specifically says that harmful effects won't break Vanish, but does *not* say that the harmful effects won't land. We understand some rogues liked using Vanish to "dodge spells" but the ability was never designed to work that way and never was going to work that way very well. The more we tried to let it be a damage negater, the harder time we had letting it guarantee stealth.

There is a current live bug with pets and guardians being able to still target a vanished rouge. That will be fixed in an upcoming patch. Other than that, we are not aware of any issues that keep the ability from working as advertised. Most concerns seems to be rogues who want it to work a different way.

TL;DR version: They're tired of Vanish being used as a dodge (prolly due to the programming issues / bugs), and instead intend on it being used only to get back into stealth. This means, with the new Vanish, moves can land, and if a DoT is still on you beyond the first 3 seconds of immunity, it'll break Vanish. They plan on fixing pet targeting before Cata.

Comment by Stonefingers

Usually, this works fine for me, but I've always used it only to enter stealth (I usually pop CoS right before vanishing in PvP). That being said, even 2 weeks ago, I sometimes had mobs chasing me in BRD & LBRS after vanishing (yes, I was farming junk boxes).

Comment by Spinnacer

This is a very good change. I will laugh when Rouges try to vanish my lava burst only to see their corpse on the ground a few seconds later.

Comment by lyom

This ability, used by rouges, allows them to weasel themselves out of a fight where they're stunlock didn't work as intended, the target survived and they would have lost. Rather than croaking, they buckle and try to worm out of combat.

Comment by dakseg

Comment by majishun144

Comment by Pipkins

Your team will likely be expecting you to bail out from a wipe and resurrect them afterwards, which is sensible, but for God's sake make sure you get the timing right. They won't appreciate it if you Vanish and leave them for dead too early only for them to recover the situation.

Comment by bubadubadoo

"Also breaks movement impairing effects."It doesn't appear to remove the daze effect. Extremely annoying when I use to to get away from an enemy, and my distance is limited because it doesn't remove daze like it says it does.

Comment by Phasha

Here is a fun macro I recently devised after 6.0 launch. It combines 4 abilities, Stealth, Sap, Vanish, and Feint, into one button:

#showtooltip/cast Vanish; Sap; Stealth/cast Feint

How to use:

Press the macro:1) If you are out of combat, not stealthed => Stealth2) If you are out of combat, stealthed => Sap3) If you are in combat, not stealthed => Feint

Blizzard has changed how the game determines if you are wearing a stance. Previously when you use the macro out of combat to get into stealth, the game will "get it" that you are under instantly, and not go into the next step, casting Feint. In Patch 6.1, however, Blizzard introduces a lag when applying a stance, thus the macro will cast Feint even if you have just casted Stealth.

I have spent some time meditating and here is a simple and effective update: replacing condition with . Here is the fabled 4-ability macro that works with Patch 6.1:

Effects when pressing the macro:1) If you are out of combat, not stealthed => Stealth2) If you are out of combat, stealthed => Sap3) If you are in combat, not stealthed, Preparation on CD => Evasion4) If you are in combat, not stealthed, Preparation not on CD => Evasion then immediately auto-refresh with Preparation

Vanish

Vanish

Instant

2 min cooldown

Requires RogueRequires level 34

Allows you to vanish from sight, entering an improved stealth mode for 3 sec. For the first 3 sec after vanishing, damage and harmful effects received will not break stealth. Also breaks movement impairing effects.